Never a Dull Moment
by AstroGirl
Summary: Stargate SG-1/Doctor Who crossover featuring Daniel Jackson and Romana II. A little conversation, a little action.


**Never a Dull Moment**

**by AstroGirl  
**

Daniel Jackson peered at the weathered inscription, muttering to himself. "...Place of the celebration... Yeah, definitely 'celebration.' Place of the celebration of... something." He leaned forward and brought his face closer to the wall, as if that would somehow make the meaning clearer.

"Discovery," said a pleasant voice at his shoulder.

He started hard enough that he almost bumped his nose against the stone. Making a rapid attempt to recover his dignity, he turned and found himself staring into a woman's face. She was calmly contemplating the inscription.

"This is the Temple of Ardraxa, place of the Celebration of Discovery," she said, trailing her finger casually along the line of symbols.

"Ah," said Daniel. And then, since that didn't seem to open up much in the way of communication, "You, uh... You speak Ancient?"

"More or less. 'Ancient' is an awfully relative term, though, don't you think?"

"Yes, I suppose it is. I'm sorry, do I know you?" She didn't look familiar, but then his memory for languages was better than his memory for faces. He pushed his glasses up his nose a little and blinked at her. Long blonde hair; pretty, girlish face. Her clothing was attractive, but ever-so-slightly strange, a little old-fashioned in some way that didn't quite fit any specific period. "Are you from here?" He made a little circle with one hand, vaguely indicating the surface of the planet around them.

"No," she said, looking over his shoulder at his field notebook. "Just passing through. Oh, that's rather good. May I?" She had plucked the notebook from his fingers before he quite realized what she was doing.

"I really don't think you should--"

"Mmm." With a pencil she'd produced from somewhere, she crossed out the question mark he'd scribbled down and replaced it with the word "Discovery" in tidy little letters. "There, that's better. I can see why it was giving you difficulty, though. It's a loan word from a schismatic dialect of Jaggaroth, not a proto-Latinate construction like the rest of it. There you are." He suddenly found the notebook back in his hand.

"Thanks." Both impressed _and_ confused now, he opened his mouth to ask the obvious next question, and found himself getting stuck as three or four obvious next questions competed to emerge at once. He'd just about gotten out a "Wh--" and was rather looking forward to discovering what was going to come after it, when he was cut off by a sudden, onrushing wave of sound. It took him a moment to identify it as being composed to varying degrees of yelling, pounding feet, and random intermittent blasts of energy weapons fire.

He dropped the notebook, shouted "Down!" and grabbed for the woman to pull her to cover, only to discover that she was already grabbing for him with the same thought in mind. Together they tumbled gracelessly over a three-foot-high section of ruined wall.

Daniel pushed himself off of the woman with a muttered apology, then peeped carefully over the wall. Beside him, she did the same. The sound was building up to a pounding, zapping roar now. Just as it was reaching a crescendo, a man came running by.

Daniel didn't get a very good look at him, as he was moving so fast that he was practically a blur, but it was impossible to miss the ridiculously long striped scarf whose ends were flapping wildly about behind him. It was equally impossible to miss the fact that he was wearing a hat, mostly because he tipped it at them as he ran by. He was followed not by Jaffa, as Daniel had half expected, but by a horde of... of... OK, he had no idea _what_ those were, but they were very large and very hairy and appeared to have improbably large tusks. They were also apparently worse shots than your average Jaffa, because not one of the energy blasts they were liberally directing at their zig-zagging prey was coming remotely close to connecting.

Their hoofed feet were pretty effectively destructive, though, churning up dirt and rocks and grass. Daniel winced as one came stomping down firmly on his discarded notebook and had to physically restrain himself from leaping up and grabbing it back.

As quickly as they'd come, they passed, rumbling and shooting off into the distance. For a few minutes, it was very, very quiet.

"Ooooh-kay," he said at last. "I don't suppose you might happen to know what that was about?"

She shrugged. "Nothing terribly important. A small misunderstanding over property rights, that's all. I expect the Doctor has it under control."

"Property rights?" he asked, seizing on the part of that response that he might actually be able to make sense of.

"Yes. They seem to be under the impression that he's their property. Don't worry. I'm sure he'll put them right." She didn't _sound_ entirely sure, Daniel thought, but at least she was smiling. "Probably best to just wait here for a bit."

"What, exactly--?" Daniel began, but he was interrupted the crackling of his radio.

"Daniel?"

"Jack! You're not going to believe what just happened--"

"If it involves a herd of wild boars packing phaser pistols, we're already on it. Listen, is there a woman with you? A blonde woman?"

"Yes." He cast a confused look at the blonde, who smiled serenely back.

Over the radio, he could hear an unfamiliar voice in the background. Daniel couldn't quite make out the words, but whatever the man was saying, he sounded terribly cheerful. Then Jack's voice returned. "Yeah, OK, well, tell her her friend says he's fine. And the both of you just stay put. We're dealing with... things." Nobody could say the word "things" in quite that same personally affronted way that Jack could.

"OK, but--"

"Whoops. Gotta go!" The radio cut out.

Daniel sighed and rubbed the side of his head. This was shaping up to be one of those days. Although, come to think of it, this wasn't even remotely the strangest thing that had happened to him this week. Somehow, the thought wasn't especially comforting.

Well, all right. Jack had ordered him to stay put, so, for the moment at least, he'd stay put. With luck, he wouldn't have to mount a heroic rescue later on. He was getting a little tired of those, to be honest. He turned back to the woman. "Well, looks like it's just you and me for now. I'm Dr. Daniel Jackson, by the way." He stuck out his hand.

She looked at it curiously for a moment, then shook it. She had a surprisingly strong grip, for possessing such dainty-looking hands. "Romanadvoratrelundar. But you can call me Romana. Most people seem to find it easier, for some reason."

"Oh. Well, I _can_ call you Romanadvoratrelundar, if it's more correct. Or more polite." He pronounced the name slowly, being careful to accurately mimic her inflections.

"No, Romana's fine. I've got quite used to it by now."

"So... you're a linguist?" Not really the most relevant question, but the first one that came to him this time.

"No. I'm not really much of anything these days. Just a traveler. But I did once take a class in the socio-linguistic development of Class B cultures. Just for fun, really. It made for a nice change of pace in a term filled with terribly dry temporal theory."

"I see. And this was on...?" After all, she'd said she wasn't from here. Which made sense, since they'd _thought_ this planet was currently uninhabited. Then again, that ought to include murderous pigmen, as well, so maybe they'd just been wrong.

"Gallifrey," she said. "I'm a Time Lord." She cocked her head and regarded him closely, as if checking to see whether that phrase meant anything to him.

Which maybe it did. Time Lord, Time Lord, where _had_ he heard that before? It was on a scroll, wasn't it? Something about the legendary Lords of Time, who had power over all of time and space, but who chose to sit alone on their own planet, refusing to interfere except in vague and shadowy ways... Yes! That was it! If he were in his office right now instead of crouched behind a half-demolished wall in a rocky field in the middle of nowhere, he'd be able to put his hands right on it. But... "Aren't you supposed to be a myth?" he said.

She shrugged. "We're supposed to be lots of things. I stopped bothering about most of them ages ago."

She favored him with another smile, and it seemed so genuine, so truly _happy_ about being here in the middle of whatever all this was, that despite his worry for Jack and the others he found himself automatically smiling back. More than that, he could feel a sense of excitement growing slowly in the back of his brain and fluttering softly somewhere in his stomach. If this was true, if this woman actually was a member of a race possibly older and more powerful even than the Ancients, and if she knew half of what she seemed to, then the things that he could learn from her were potentially, well, _incredible_. Not to mention that she seemed like a really interesting person. With a nice smile.

He cleared his throat, shifting awkwardly. "So, listen, Romana, I'm wondering if maybe when whatever's actually going on here is all over with, you might like to--"

He was interrupted once again by the sound of pounding feel and yelling, although this time the hat-and-scarf guy -- the Doctor, presumably, although Daniel realized he hadn't had the chance to ask Romana exactly what he was a doctor _of_ -- was being pursued only by Jack, and the yelling consisted entirely of Jack shouting things like, "Dammit, wait up!"

Romana rose gracefully to her feet just as the Doctor skidded to a sudden stop on the other side of the wall. Daniel, seeing nothing more dangerous-looking than the slightly annoyed expression on Jack's swiftly approaching face, followed her lead.

"Romana!" cried the Doctor with a grin wider that Daniel would have thought physically possible for anybody who looked that human. "There you are. Having fun?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "Fresh air, good conversation. It's been very peaceful."

Daniel snorted. At which point, Jack arrived, panting slightly, and Daniel tore his attention away from the strangers. "Jack, what happened? Are you all right?"

Jack waved his concern away with a gesture. "Yeah, yeah, everybody's fine. Porky and his friends were trying to sell us into slavery or something, but this weirdo here helped us out." He jerked a thumb in the Doctor's direction, and the Doctor waggled his fingers cheerfully at them. "Carter and Teal'c are wrapping things up now."

Somewhere off in the distance, there was a muffled _boom_!, and a cloud of smoke drifted toward the sky.

"Ah," said Jack with a satisfied expression. "That would be the wrap-up."

"Great," said Daniel. Then, leaning over the wall towards Jack and lowering his voice a little. "Listen, Jack, if these people are who I think they are, they could be incredibly useful. I think we ought to stay and talk to them."

"Yeah, one step ahead of you, there. This Doctor guy already agreed to come back through the Gate for a debriefing. He's got this little door-opening gadget that could come in _really_ handy if Carter and her egghead buddies can figure out how to copy it."

"Hey, that's terrific! Did you hear that Romana? You're invited back to-- Oh."

Where Romana had been standing, there was now only a flattened patch of scraggly grass. Far off, across the field, two figures were running towards a small blue structure that Daniel could swear hadn't been there when he'd arrived.

By the time he and Jack got there, it had vanished.

"Goddamn super-science aliens," said Jack. "I _hate_ those guys. Oh, well. Easy come, easy go. You done with those translations yet?"

"Yeah," said Daniel and went back to pick up his notebook.

Fortunately, it hadn't been trampled too badly. He flipped to the most recent page and sighed. The really strange thing, he considered, looking at Romana's handwriting, was that when it came to his luck with women, getting a new vocabulary item out of the encounter and watching the lady in question run away under her own power actually constituted a significant improvement.

Well, hey, maybe there was hope for him yet.


End file.
